If you were a kid who liked Star Trek in the mid-1980s it was something you kept to yourself. I don’t know how a major franchise, a huge source of revenue for large entertainment conglomerates, could also be a secret shame, but it was. If you liked that “gay show with cheap sets” as one of my tormentors put it, you weren’t sitting at this lunch table, no way.

And when you have to go back to school each day and face the kids who laugh at you (as all kids laugh at all kids, but some more than others) you need to find a coping strategy. Mr Spock, the greatest thing about the best fictional universe ever created, had the solution right there in his very first scene. After hearing the term “irritated” he gives a puzzled look, then, spoken at a distance, a revelation: “Ahh, yes. One of your Earth emotions.”

Leonard Nimoy, actor who played Mr Spock on Star Trek, dies aged 83

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Laugh at us all you want, but we Star Trek fans? We are operating on a different level.

My mother, who referred to the show as Star Dreck, would snap off the TV and tell me to do my homework, that there was always a Red Alert, and, as if daring me, said there are no careers in watching Star Trek. She admitted defeat when I started writing the One Trek Mind column on StarTrek.com, and began hosting panels at Star Trek conventions. And she just called to say she was sorry about the passing of “Dr Spock”, and I’ll never quite know if that famous malapropism was intentional.

In 2007 I went to the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas with a videographer who had never once seen an episode. He’d heard the title, but couldn’t even name any of the Captains. I got the clear sense that his ignorance was deliberate, and proud. But when he saw a poster with Leonard Nimoy and his pointy ears, even he couldn’t keep up the charade: “Oh, yeah, that’s Spock. That’s an icon.”

Indeed. Chaplin’s tramp, Nimoy’s ears. To argue which has a greater impact would be illogical.

The stories of how Nimoy personally tweaked the character of Spock to perfection have been told numerous times. He felt slugging a villain was too boorish, so suggested an alternative that became the Vulcan Nerve Pinch. (This would be season one, episode five, The Enemy Within, but we all know the best use was in season one, episode 23, A Taste of Armageddon.)

The Vulcan salute (first seen when Spock is greeted by High Priestess T’Pau in season two, episode one, Amok Time) was something Nimoy cribbed from seeing as a child in orthodox synagogues.

But beyond these factoids is the sense that Nimoy, through his association with the character, was a living representation of the Utopia that Star Trek represented. Unlike his loveable comrade William Shatner goofing around on horseback, Nimoy appealed to the audience’s more cerebral side. For post-Trek trash television I’ll take In Search Of … over Rescue 911 any day.

Nimoy took this in stride. In his two autobiographies, he joked how scientists at Nasa and JPL would want to show him their latest work, and he would nod and pretend he knew what they were talking about, never wanting to disillusion them that he was just an actor. Famously, that first book was 1975’s I Am Not Spock, the title misinterpreted as a diss to Star Trek fans. Really it was a way to tell his story in comparison with that of his most famous character. This, of course, was followed up by 1995’s I Am Spock, giving us all the opportunity to say “I knew it!”

Leonard Nimoy obituary

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When he died earlier this week, Nimoy was just shy of his 84th birthday. He overcame a battle with alcoholism. He had tremendous comic timing, especially since his character was supposed to show no emotion. He was a key player in the early fight against Holocaust deniers. I only met him once, for 30 seconds. I showed him my Vulcan Salute, and he smiled warmly and gave me a compliment – as if every other idiot doesn’t come up and do the same thing.

How much does Nimoy mean to the hardcore Star Trek fan? Let’s just say I own his albums and sometimes, when it is just me and quiet of night, I play them without a Planck length of irony. Listen to his ode to the heavens You Are Not Alone and tell me it isn’t a beautiful melody? Let’s also just say that I can’t even think about that final scene between Nimoy and the “New Spock” Zachary Quinto at the close of JJ Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek without sobbing. Especially today.

Spock is dead, they say. Long live Spock!

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